Apple Approves Third-Party Driver for Nvidia, AMD GPUs on Apple Silicon Macs

Apple has officially signed a driver created by Tiny Corp that lets external graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD work with Apple Silicon Macs. This is the first time Apple has allowed third-party GPU drivers on its newer Mac computers.

The approval is significant because Apple has been blocking external graphics cards since it switched from Intel to its own Apple Silicon chips in 2020. Before this, users had to disable Apple's security protections to use external GPUs, which created security risks.

The new driver works through Apple's official DriverKit framework, meaning it runs within Apple's security system. However, there are major limitations. The driver only works for AI research and running large language models, not for gaming or speeding up regular graphics.

Users still need technical skills to use it. They must compile the driver using Docker software rather than simply plug-and-play installation. The approval removes the need to disable System Integrity Protection, Apple's main security feature.

This signals Apple may be opening up to more third-party hardware support, especially for professional and research uses.